A bill prompted by Casey Anthony‘s acquittal last year of murdering her two-year-old daughter Caylee received unanimous support from a Senate committee this morning.

The measure (SB 858) would make it a third-degree felony for parents or guardians to lie to law enforcement officials during an investigation when a child under the age of 16 is missing and is seriously injured or dies. Each count would be punishable by up to 5 years in prison and up to $5,000. Under the proposal, Casey Anthony could have been sentenced to 20 years behind bars for misleading police in the investigation into her missing daughter who was later found dead.

“I think it would be utterly reprehensible for a parent to know that their child is missing and intentionally steer law enforcement in the wrong direction,” bill sponsor Joe Negron, R-Stuart, told the Senate Criminal Justice Committee this morning.

The bill is not as far-reaching as other proposals that include making it a crime to fail to report a child missing within a certain period of time. Negron said that’s because law enforcement officials advised that such a law might confuse parents, some of whom already mistakenly believe they must wait 48 hours before contacting authorities when a child goes missing.

But Sen. Alan Hays questioned whether the penalty was severe enough.

“I share your dismay, disgust, reprehension, everything, just the repulsiveness, the very idea of a parent willfully giving false information,” Hays, R-Umatilla, said. “Sen. Negron, I’m ready to throw them in jail and throw the key away.”

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A sweeping gambling bill that would allow up to three casinos in Florida passed its first hurdle late Monday with a 7-3 vote in the Senate Regulated Industries Committee.

The measure (SB 710) would allow voters in any county to sign off on the “destination resorts” and allow pari-mutuels in to have whatever games the casinos offer, including blackjack and baccarat – if state regulators grant a casino permit in the county. And it would bar any new dog or horse tracks or jai-alai frontons from opening anywhere in the state.

Sen. Ellyn Bogdanoff, the bill’s sponsor, acknowledged that the future of her proposal – dealing with everything from a new gambling commission to the casinos to Internet cafes – is anything but certain.

“Yeah, this is a big lift and there’s a lot of stuff in here. Call it what you want. Call it an expansion. Call it a reform. Call it a redirection…My hope is that we would stop the proliferation of gaming through clever lawyering or loopholes,” Bogdanoff, R-Fort Lauderdale, said before the vote.

Senate President Mike Haridopolos appeared to have fast-tracked the bill – it received its first committee vote the day before the legislative session opened – and said he wants an early floor vote on it. But that may not happen, said Sen. John Thrasher, chairman of the Rules and Calendar Committee, the bill’s final stop before it goes to the full chamber. First, it heads to the Senate Budget committee.

But the House has yet to hold a single hearing on its version, Thrasher pointed out.

“They have not had the first peep over there in terms of listening to the arguments about this bill,” Thrasher, R-St. Augustine, said. “I’ve got a feeling that…they’re going to have to show some movement in the House before we take it any further.”

Senate District 27′s Lizbeth Benacquisto became the first in her chamber to qualify by petition for reelection, according to a press release issued by her campaign today.

But right now it appears the Wellington Republican won’t be representing Palm Beach County by the time the November election rolls around. Under the proposed Senate maps, Benacquisto’s district would be confined on the other coast to Lee and Charlotte counties. Her district currently stretches from West Palm Beach across the state through Hendry and Glade and winds up in Lee and Charlotte.

Benacquisto is already facing a GOP primary opponent – state Rep. Trudi Williams, R-Fort Myers – in her reelection bid.

Benacquisto, elected to the Senate last year, gathered more than the requisite 1,580 signatures to qualify by petition, according to the release, a “clear indication that Senator Lizbeth Benacquisto has broad grassroots support.”

A push in the Florida House to do away with physical education in middle schools will be a heavy lift across the hall.

A House committee on Tuesday approved a measure (HB 4057) by a 9-6 vote that would strike the requirements that middle school students take P.E. The American Heart Association is trying to beat back the proposal, saying that more than 30 percent of Florida children are obese and more than 62 percent of all Floridians are fat.

Senate President Mike Haridopolos hadn’t heard about the bill when we asked him this afternoon what he thought about doing away with PE in public schools.

“Who said that? Who filed that one? I love P.E.!” Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, said.

The bill doesn’t have a Senate sponsor, and, judging by the president’s comments, may not get one.

“That’s not on my to-do list at this point. My wife’s a doctor and I was a high school and college athlete. I believe P.E.’s a good thing,” he said.

The Palm Beach County Commission has filed a lawsuit against Gov. Rick Scott, Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Florida House and the Florida Senate today over a gun law that that went into effect on Oct. 1. Local officials who violate the law could be removed from office and face a $5,000 fine.

The sanctions “are simply a form of political bullying that serves no governmental purpose” and have a “chilling effect,” the lawsuit reads.

The commission’s lawsuit complains that the new law, sponsored by Sen. Joe Negron, is unconstitutional because it violates the separation of powers because it gives the governor the ability to remove local officials from office and strips local officials of immunity from lawsuits.

Under current law, the governor is only allowed to suspend local officials and the Florida Senate has the power to remove them or reinstate them.

“Threatened removal of individual commissioners in a matter that is consistent with the terms of the Florida Constitution is political overreaching and political bullying that serves no legitimate governmental purpose,” Amy Taylor Petrick, an attorney for the county, wrote in the lawsuit filed in the Palm Beach County Circuit Court today.

The lawsuit asks the court to find that the law is unconstitutional, stop the governor from being able to remove local officials from office and order that they can’t be fined for breaking the law.

Negron said the penalties are necessary because city and county commissioners have ignored a law that gives the legislature the discretion to regulate gun laws.

After the law went into effect, municipalities, counties and state agencies were forced to scrap hundreds of measures dealing with firearms and could no longer bar people from being guns into government buildings, including the state Capitol.

“Political disputes should be resolved in the elected government arena rather than in courtrooms. So we’ll see where it goes from here,” said Negron, who had not seen the lawsuit Tuesday evening.

Negron, R-Stuart, said he does not intend to file a bill to repeal the law during the legislative session that begins next month.

“I would consider that just as I have to follow federal law and I have to follow county laws and city laws when I’m in their counties and cities, they should follow the preemption of the state law then nobody has anything to worry about,” Negron, R-Stuart, said.

Spokeswomen for Bondi and House Speaker Dean Cannon said their lawyers are reviewing the lawsuit.

National Rifle Association lobbyist Marion Hammer, who pushed the bill, called the lawsuit un-American.

“They’re using taxpayer dollars to try to keep from being punished for violating the law? That’s exactly the American way, is it?” she said.

Two animal-loving groups are pushing a bill that would allow greyhound tracks to stop racing dogs but allow the tracks to keep operating the more lucrative card rooms.

Dog racing attendance has declined, as have revenues, and most people who go to the tracks ignore the greyhounds in favor of placing their bets on poker.

GREY2K USA, a group formed to end dog racing around the country, and the national American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, are both behind a measure sponsored by Delray Beach Democratic Sen. Maria Sachs, who sponsored a similar “decoupling” proposal earlier this year.

The ASPCA this morning released a poll showing that a majority of voters view the dog racing industry unfavorably. And GREY2K released a report documenting abuse and neglect of the dogs since 2004.

And the attendance and revenues have dropped dramatically at the tracks since 2004, according to data provided by state agencies included in the report.

Since 2004, the total amount gambled on racing at Florida’s 13 greyhound tracks, including the Palm Beach Kennel Club, decreased by 35 percent, paid attendance went down by 69 percent, and state tax revenues declined by 72 percent, the report found.

At many tracks, the dogs are forced to live in small cages and state regulators have written up at least nine cases of severe neglect associated with the kennels over the past seven years, the report found.

“Greyhound racing is cruel and inhumane and must end,” GREY2K USA president and general counsel Christine Dorchak told reporters at a press conference outside the House chambers this morning.

Forcing dog track operators to run the greyhounds so they can keep their card rooms open “is a mandate for cruelty,” ASPCA director of government relations Ann Church said.

PBKC owners won’t stop racing the dogs and support the measure, as they did earlier this year, in part because it will make their races more lucrative. Only three of the state’s existing 13 dog tracks, including PBKC, are expected to continue to keep running the dogs if the bill becomes law. Supporters of the bill say it was not intended to end dog racing but to allow struggling tracks to stay open with other betting options.

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A special Senate committee created in response to the murder of two-year-old Caylee Anthony and subsequent acquittal of her mother Casey wants to make it a felony to lie to law enforcement officials when a child goes missing and is hurt or killed, punishable by five years in prison.

Senate Select Committee on Protecting Florida’s Children Chairman Joe Negron, R-Stuart, proposed the measure heightening penalties under current law, now a misdemeanor for lying to law enforcement officials investigating crimes. Instead, Negron’s measure would make it a third-degree felony for anyone to “knowingly and willfully” give false information to law enforcement officers conducting an investigation involving a child 16 years of age or younger.

Casey Anthony was acquitted of murdering her daughter, two-year-old Caylee Anthony, this summer but convicted of four counts of misleading law enforcement officers. An Orlando judge sentenced Anthony to four years behind bars – one for each count of lying to police officers – and she was released earlier this year after serving three years.

Under Negron’s proposal, Anthony could have been sentenced to 20 years in prison.

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An update on red-light cameras in the Senate Transportation Committee gave lawmakers the opportunity to vent some concerns about the traffic devices.

Sen. Larcenia Bullard related a tale of one of her constituents’ sons who was caught by a red-light camera while toting some of his pot-smoking pals. Police used the tape showing his back-seat buddies getting high to charge the teenager with a drug offense instead of a traffic infraction, said Bullard, whose district includes part of Palm Beach County.

Bullard said the cameras should take photos limited in size to the trunk of the car and not include the window of the vehicle. That way officers – and others – can’t peek at what’s going on inside, she said.

“A man is sitting in the back seat with a woman who he’s not married to and his wife,” Bullard, D-Miami, said, drawing snickers from her committee colleagues. “But it’s very true. This is real. This stuff happens. I see where this camera is really working but we need to get beyond taking pictures of that back window where you can see someone cheating on his wife or someone smoking marijuana.”

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Senate Democrats tapped Delray Beach’s Maria Sachs today to serve on Senate Democratic Leader Nan Rich’s leadership team. Sachs, a lawyer, will serve along with Sen. Bill Montford, D-Tallahassee, as one of the caucus’ two minority whips. Sachs replaces Sen. Tony Hill, D-Jacksonville, who yesterday completed his last day in the Senate after serving for 17 years as a legislator.

“I am honored to serve as the new Senate Democratic Whip,” Sachs said in a press release. “I will bring energy and a strong voice in fighting for Democratic principles for our state.”

Sachs, a lawyer and former prosecutor, was elected to the Senate in 2010 after serving four years in the state House.

“Senator Sachs has distinguished herself as a passionate voice on behalf of Floridians from all walks of life,” Rich, D-Weston, said. “She’ll bring that same dedication to her new leadership position as an advocate for Democratic priorities.”

A select committee headed by Sen. Joe Negron began looking into whether Florida’s laws need to be changed in reaction to the Casey Anthony case, in which a jury cleared the Orange County woman of killing her 2-year-old daughter Caylee Marie.

Caylee Anthony was last seen on June 15, 2008. Her mother waited a month before telling her parents or police that the child was missing. Caylee Anthony’s body was found in December 2008, but her body was so decomposed medical examiners could not determine the cause of death.

Following Casey Anthony’s acquittal, state lawmakers filed more than a half-dozen bills that would impose fines or jail sentences for failing to report a missing child, currently not a crime in Florida or any other state.

Senate President Mike Haridopolos created the Select Committee on Protecting Florida’s Children to make recommendations on possible changes to the law.

At the committee’s first meeting Monday afternoon, Negron said the select committee’s first order of business will be to decide whether new laws are needed and cautioned against allowing emotions to prevail in crafting legislation.

“The committee is not here to second guess the jury,” Negron, R-Stuart, said.

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Lawmakers approved a $69.7 billion spending plan and quietly ended the 2011 legislative session at 3:35 a.m. without any pomp and circumstance.

Instead, the 60-day session ended with Senate President Mike Haridopolos and House Speaker Dean Cannon publicly rebuking each other over with Haridopolos accusing Cannon of playing “silly games” and Cannon claiming to “take the high road” by rejecting a controversial Senate tax break.

Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, called his members back after 2 a.m. this morning to take up a tax-break proposal that includes a three-day sales tax holiday for back-to-school shoppers after the House stripped out a tax break for at least one greyhound dog track in Senate Rules Chairman John Thrasher’s district.

Haridopolos apologized for asking them to return about an hour after he sent them home and instructed them the session would reconvene at 10 a.m.

Shortly before Haridopolos recalled the Senate, Cannon gaveled down the House without passing two claims bills that were Haridopolos priorities. Eric Brody was set to get $12 million from the Broward County Sheriff’s Office for an accident more than a decade ago that left him severely disabled, and William Dillon was slated to get less than $1 million after being wrongfully imprisoned for nearly three decades for a crime he didn’t commit.

“They should have been served today by this legislature. Politics got in the way today and I’m embarrassed,” he said.
Gov. Rick Scott left the building around midnight as the legislative session devolved into chaos. Scott had been scheduled to participate in the ceremonial white hanky drop but instead went home to bed because he had a busy schedule this weekend, his spokesman Brian Burgess said.

The House approved the budget shortly before 2 a.m., about two-and-a-half hours after the Senate and following some very hard feelings between the two chambers.

The House then took up the disputed tax break bill (CS/SB 7203).

But the House remained angered by the Senate’s killing a pair of professional deregulation bills earlier in the night — with House Speaker Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park, saying that move broke an agreement between the two chambers.

“In light of the Senate’s inability to meet that obligation, I’ve decided that our chamber would take the high road…and send it all to the Senate tonight, and leave no ambiguity,” Cannon said.

The House took up the tax-break bill, voted to remove the Jacksonville track provision, repackaged the measure as HB 143 and sent it back to the Senate. With the budget behind them, and the tax-break package structured to their liking, Cannon and House members adjourned at 2:07 a.m., Saturday.

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UPDATE: Senate’s going home until 10 a.m. Senate President Mike Haridopolos said he hopes they’ll get the tax cut bill by then. The tax cut measure (SB 7203) includes a component that would allow a Jacksonville greyhound track to get arcade-style slot machines. A track in Rules Chairman John Thrasher’s district is seeking the video slots.

Gov. Rick Scott has left the building as the legislative session devolved into chaos around midnight.

Forget the traditional sine die white hanky drop where the governor, House Speaker and Senate President ceremonially signal the successful completion of another session. Not going to happen.

Instead, the Senate extended session until 6 p.m. tomorrow, miffed that the House had ignored a handful of bills considered crucial, including a $12 million by the Broward Sheriffs Office to Eric Brody who was injured by a Broward deputy 13 years ago.

Around 12:15 a.m., Senate President Mike Haridopolos advised his members to stick around in informal recess until 1 a.m. If he and House Speaker Dean Cannon can’t reach an agreement on what bills to take up by then, Haridopolos said he’ll call it a night.

“I will try not to keep us too late,” Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, said.

Earlier in the evening, the Senate revolted against the chamber’s GOP leadership by voting down a measure deregulating less than a half dozen professions, including interior designers. The House is now holding up an economic development bill with a tax credit and a sales tax holiday the Senate was hoping to finalize tonight.

It seems an unfortunate end to the governor’s first session. Scott’s spokesman Brian Burgess said his boss is disappointed there wasn’t a simultaneous finale but “very, very pleased” that “90 percent of what we wanted went through.”

Scott had to get to bed because “he’s got a very aggressive schedule over the next few days,” Burgess said.

With less than 12 hours to go, lawmakers are now close to sealing a deal further cracking down on pill mills.

The final deal will include a ban on doctors dispensing powerful narcotics with no exemption for workers’ compensation physicians, no cap on the amount of doses pharmacies can dispense – a major sticking point for Sen. Mike Fasano, shepherding the bill in the Senate. It does include Attorney General Pam Bondi’s proposed language stiffening penalties against rogue pain management clinics and doctors. It will also ban pharmaceutical companies from contributing to the private foundation that pays for the state’s prescription drug database.

Limiting the amount of highly addictive pain drugs that get on the street has become a priority of Gov. Rick Scott, who testified before Congress on the issue last month touting his plan to track the drugs from the wholesaler to the pharmacy to the doctor. Scott had to give up on capping the dosage amounts after cancer hospitals and hospices complained the limits would keep them from being able to treat patients in chronic pain.

Procedurally, the Senate will take up the House’s bill (HB 7095), put the compromise language on it, and send it back to the House for a final vote before 10:16 p.m. That’s the earliest lawmakers can vote on the budget, the only thing they’re constitutionally required to do during the 60-day legislative session, and they are expected to call it quits shortly after. Gov. Rick Scott plans to join House Speaker Dean Cannon and Senate President Mike Haridopolos for the traditional sine die hankie drop.

An elections overhaul likely to wind up in court that would cut nearly in half the number of days for early voting and impose tougher restrictions on groups registering voters is headed to Gov. Rick Scott.

The GOP-dominated legislature easily pushed through the elections revamp over the objections of Democrats who argued the bill will make it harder for Floridians to vote and get their ballots counted.

The 157-page elections measure will reduce the number of days available for early voting from 14 to 8 but keep the same number of hours – 96 – and allow supervisors of elections to extend weekend hours.

Palm Beach County elections supervisor Susan Bucher estimated the early voting changes would cost her office more than $941 million to secure additional polling places, equipment and salaries.

The overhaul make it tougher for like the League of Women Voters, labor unions and the NAACP to sign up prospective voters by requiring them to register with the state, give voter registration forms to elections supervisors within 48 hours or face $1,000 fines, among other things.
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Civic groups like the Boy Scouts of America could find it harder to register voters under a sweeping elections bill (HB 1355) approved by the Senate and sent back to the House this afternoon.

The elections overhaul would, among other things, create tight restrictions on third-party voter organizations – such as the League of Women Voters, unions and the NAACP – and require them to hand over voter registration forms to elections supervisors within 48 hours or face $1,000 fines.

The bill would also shorten the number of days voters can cast their ballots early before Election Day.

Democrats argue the changes are aimed at suppressing Democratic voter turnout in 2012 because Democrats tend to use early voting more than Republicans and relied heavily on third-party groups to register voters in the 2008 presidential election.

“Maybe some people didn’t like the outcome of our last presidential election or the outcome of the ballot initiatives that have passed in recent years,” Senate Democratic Leader Nan Rich of Weston said before the 25-13 vote. Republican Sens. Mike Fasano of New Port Richey and Paula Dockery of Lakeland joined Democrats in opposition.

Earlier today, union leaders urged Democrats to ask questions about the measure to lay the groundwork for lawsuits later this summer.

Democrats also complained that the changes would make it more difficult to voters to cast their ballots and have them counted.

But Sen. Mike Bennett, a Vietnam vet, said that maybe voting shouldn’t be so easy. He compared Floridians’ voting experiences with voters in new democracies in Africa who have to “walk 200 or 300 miles” to cast their ballots.

“How much more convenient do you want to make it? You want to go to the house? Take the polling booth with us?” Bennett, R-Bradenton, wanted to know. “For the guy who died to give you that right to vote it was not inconvenient…I wouldn’t have any problem making it harder. I would want them to vote as badly as I want to vote. I want the people of the state of Florida to want to vote as bad as that person in Africa who’s willing to walk 200 miles…This should not be easy.”

After being scolded by two Republicans, the Florida Senate sent to Gov. Rick Scott a second abortion bill this morning that would require women to have an ultrasound before they get an abortion.

Sen. Evelyn Lynn harshly rebuked her colleagues for wasting time with emotional issues and failing to do enough to create jobs and boost the economy.

“I didn’t come up here to come and tell you what you must do with your bodies,” Lynn, R-Ormond Beach, said. “I don’t want to have to continually talk about these issues on this floor when I have people pleading with me to help me please find money to keep my lights on…I will vote for every one of those bills. That’s not why I came up here. And I will vote no not only on this bill but every other bill we have on abortion. It is the wrong thing for us to be discussing and taking endless amounts of time on.”

Sen. Nancy Detert, a Venice Republican, said she resented having to vote on the issue.

“I personally resent writing legislation that acts like I’m too stupid to confer with my own doctor on what I should do. This is not what we were sent up here to do. I have no intention of telling you my faith, my personal problems, and I frankly don’t want to hear yours either,” Detert said.

The ultrasound bill (HB 1127) is one of four measures making it harder for women to get abortions lawmakers have passed during the legislative session making it more difficult for women to get abortions. Last year, Gov. Charlie Crist vetoed a measure similar to the ultrasound bill the Senate approved by a 24-15 vote, with three other Republicans joining Lynn in opposition. Gov. Rick Scott has said he would have signed the measure into law.
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The Florida Senate approved a measure that would make it harder for young women to get a judge to sign off on an abortion without her parents or guardians’ knowledge.

The Senate approved the measure (HB 1247) with a 26-12 vote with just one Republican, Sen. Evelyn Lynn of Ormond Beach, voting against it. The measure now goes to Gov. Rick Scott, who is likely to sign it.

Democrats argued that the many young women seeking the judicial waivers are afraid to tell their parents because they have been raped or abused by a family member and that the current parental notification law requiring a minor to go to a judge anywhere in the appellate district in which she lives is working. Last year, about judges issued about 300 orders allowing the procedure.

Sen. Gwen Margolis, a former Senate president, said she was around before the historic Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing a woman’s right to an abortion. Margolis spoke of a young friend who bled to death after trying to give herself an abortion because she was too scared to tell her parents.

“That’s what happens with a lot of these young women. They’re afraid to tell their families…This is the real world. In the olden days, we had lots of deaths because of this kind of action,” said Margolis, D-Miami.

But Sen. Alan Hays, the bill sponsor, said that abortion counselors are taking children across the state to judges who would be more likely to grant the waiver.

“I find it totally and completely repulsive that we would allow an adult to take one of these 13 or 14-year-old young ladies and drive her from Crestview to Fernandina Beach to get an abortion,” Hays, R-Umatilla, argued.

Stay tuned for the vote on a second abortion bill requiring women to have ultrasounds before they get abortions. The Senate is now debating the measure, similar to one vetoed by Gov. Charlie Crist last year.

With the Senate poised to pass an elections overhaul opposed by the League of Women Voters and other voting-rights groups, a labor union leader prompted Senate Democrats to ask loads of questions not just to find out more information about the bill (HB 1355) but to help prepare for lawsuits.

“The questions you ask lays the basis and foundation for the challenges on this,” Florida AFL-CIO president Mike Williams advised the Senate Democratic caucus this morning.

The sweeping elections package includes such strict regulation of third parties conducting voter registration drives that the League of Women Voters will likely no longer participate, the league’s lobbyist Jessica Lowe told the caucus.

Much of the caucus discussion this morning centered around a Medicaid overhaul crafted in secret by GOP House and Senate leaders over the past few days. The bill (SB 1972) is slated to be heard today in the Senate although it has not yet been released to the public. Senate HHS chief Joe Negron, R-Stuart, who’s crafting the proposal, spoke with Democrats this morning about it but failed to win support.

Democrats who wanted to file amendments to the bill were told they can’t until the original bill is filed.

Florida lawmakers are poised to make the state’s parental notification of abortion laws stricter, making it more difficult for a minor to get a judges’ approval for the procedure.

By a 20-19 vote today, the Florida Senate rejected an amendment that would have kept the current law allowing minors to get a waiver from a judge anywhere in the appellate circuit in which she lives. The bill (SB 1770, HB 1247) instead would limit girls seeking the waiver to the circuit court.

That’s problematic for minors who live in rural communities or small counties whose family members are likely neighbors of or on close terms with courthouse workers or observers, argued Democrats and some Republicans, putting her confidentiality at risk. Many of the young women seeking the judicial permission for the abortions are victims of rape or incest, they said.

“I’m sorry that some people in here don’t understand that there are families where if a young woman goes to them she could be beaten or even killed because of…incest or rape,” said Senate Democratic Leader Nan Rich of Weston. “We should not be doing anything to place further barriers in front of these young women…There is no need to change this.”

But Sen. Alan Hays, who sponsored the bill, said that young women have plenty of opportunity to see a judge in their own community and should not be allowed to judge-shop.

“I find it preposterous that a young lady…might be put in a vehicle and transported all the way from Escambia County to Duval County just so she can get an abortion without her parents knowing about it,” Hays, R-Umatilla, said.

Abortion rights advocates contend that the measure, already approved by the House and expected to be passed by the Senate tomorrow, would make Florida’s parental notification laws the strictest in the nation.

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With no debate, the Florida Senate quickly and quietly approved an immigration measure, keeping alive for now the issue the GOP-dominated legislature is unlikely to ultimately agree on.

The Senate measure, finalized yesterday after an emotional floor debate, would require work force boards to use E-Verify to check the immigration status of potential workers before referring them to employers and prohibit undocumented residents from receiving state or federal benefits. It would also allow nonviolent criminals to serve shorter sentences if they agree to be deported. And it would require law enforcement officers to make a “reasonable effort” to ascertain immigration status after someone has been arrested and detained.

The Senate approved the bill (SB 2040) by a 23-16 vote as dozens of immigrants and their children sat in the public gallery overlooking the chamber. The immigrants, a continuous presence in the Capitol who have stepped up pressure on lawmakers to abandon the issue over the past two weeks, left singing a song about freedom.

Despite the Senate’s action today, chances of the two chambers reaching agreement on the thorny issue remain close to nil.

House GOP leaders said they do not believe they have the votes to take up the Senate’s much weaker version of their proposal (HB 7089) that would require businesses to use E-Verify and give sheriffs, deputies and police officers the authority to ask for immigration documentation when they are pursuing a criminal investigation.